As a marketer, it's easy to become flustered with the constant updates to search algorithms. Trying to determine if your website and its content meets the criteria to rank well in search results can feel like a full time job. You can find hundreds of guides online for how to outsmart the Facebook algorithm or SEO tips "to beat" the way that Google ranks content. While it's important to be privy with the current SEO landscape, your time is better spent focusing on creating meaningful organic content rather than trying to outsmart search algorithms.

If you think that you no longer need to create high-quality organic content for your audience to find your business online, think again. Yes, paid advertising can bring you immediate results, but creating meaningful organic content needs to also be a component of your search strategy.

Why Creating Meaningful Organic Content Matters
While there is a lengthy list of criteria that Google looks for to rank content, your priority needs to be serving your audience high-quality, value-added content. The objective for search engines like Google is to provide users with the most useful, accurate, and relevant results. While it takes time to create meaningful organic content that your audience perceives as valuable, doing so will help you to keep your business visible in search results despite the constant algorithm updates.

Today's consumers are turning to the internet to research products and services before making a purchase decision. They expect that brands are taking the time to create useful organic content to educate their audience and help move customers through the buyer journey. However, in reality, most businesses aren't fulfilling this expectation.

Gain a Competitive Advantage with Organic Content CreationAccording to a recent study, 60 percent of consumers said the organic content that today's brands are creating isn't meaningful. Instead, most of the organic content being published is sales messaging that doesn't address the needs of the target consumer or is irrelevant to what the audience is looking for online.
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With this being said, your business has an opportunity to shine and gain a competitive advantage by taking the time to create meaningful organic content.

What Constitutes Meaningful Organic Content?
Meaningful content taps into consumers' emotions, therefore helping to connect the brand on a much deeper level to consumers. By creating original content that your audience finds relevant and useful, the content becomes meaningful. Instead of creating content that is brand-focused, strive to address the topics that are important to your target customer. In short, meaningful organic content needs to benefit more than just your business.

To create useful organic content that resonates with your target audience, we recommend incorporating one or more of the following elements:

Emotion
To be able to conjure emotion in consumers, you need to know what's on their minds and which topics drive them to engage.

Humor
Humor is not appropriate to use in every piece of content that you create. However, when used properly, humor can make an affinity connection with your target consumers that speaks to their personal wellbeing or situation that they're currently dealing with. If you stop taking everything so seriously and inject some humor into your content when the context is right, you'll help to humanize your brand and become more likable with your audience.

Facts
Including statistics that support your point of view will help you to connect with your audience at a deeper subconscious level as humans have a desire to want to hear the facts.

Relevant Topics
Do you know what your target audience is searching for online? Having a clear understanding of your buyer personas will help you to cover relevant topics, thus helping to boost your search ranking.
​Solutions
You will give your content meaning when you provide solutions to your audience's fears, needs, and concerns. When creating content, use it as an opportunity to solve problems and be meaningful.

Balancing Organic and Paid Content
Considering that social media algorithms give organic content very little reach (for example, only 2 to 4 percent reach on Facebook), many brands are choosing to scrap organic content creation altogether. However, there are several reasons why meaningful organic content is still crucial to a successful search strategy:

1. Helps with Social DiscoveryThe way that people are searching for content on social media platforms is changing. Instead of simply browsing through newsfeeds, users are using social search features to discover new content. For instance, when someone searches for your business on Facebook, your Featured Posts (organic content) will appear before your Promoted Posts (paid content).

2. Offsets Negative Algorithm ScoringAlgorithms place more emphasis on the engagement of your content than the overall reach. While your paid content may provide you with a more broad reach, your algorithm scoring could be low if you don't earn much engagement. Adding high-quality organic content to the mix can help to offset negative algorithm scoring.

3. Provides Validation that Your Brand is CredibleYour organic content is where you're going to earn the most comments, likes, and shares from your followers. When people research your business online, seeing useful organic content that has earned a lot of engagement will help to provide validation that your brand is credible.

In summary, organic content most certainly isn't dead, and businesses that continue to make meaningful organic content part of their digital marketing strategy will be able to break through the constant algorithm updates and still remain visible to their target audience.
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Creating high-quality original content requires an investment of your time, but will benefit your business greatly. If you don't have the time to dedicate to content creation, we can help. Our team at New York Ave can help you to increase brand awareness and search visibility with meaningful organic content. Contact us to learn more about our full-service content creation program.